When we face a need that asks a lot of us, it's tempting to try to make the needy person invisible. At Deseret, I'm talking about how both parties try to avoid acknowledging the humanity and reality of the one in need—Democrats averting their eyes from the child in the womb, Republicans from the refugee… Read More
Tag: witness of weakness
Lyme and Literacy in Suffering
I got to read and review Ross Douthat's memoir of Lyme disease, The Deep Places for National Review. The book is thought-provoking and unsettling. It is as much about how to endure suffering as how to address medical mysteries. In some ways, Douthat’s striving for a cure is a transposition of the same meritocratic story… Read More
Snow Days and Slack
The covidtide winter was already hard, and then schools started doing away with snow days in favor of digital school. I'm at Breaking Ground defending the snow day and its power to interrupt our overscheduled, strained routines. Slack is a necessary part of life, both for the individual and for the community. In Prayer as a… Read More
Writing Back Again from the Broken Land
My husband Alexi and I have written our first game together! Back Again from the Broken Land is a Tolkien-inspired role-playing game about small adventures walking home from a big war. We launched the game on Kickstarter as part of ZineQuest. In the game, you and the other members of your fellowship are making your… Read More
The Wasted Potential of Wonder Woman 1984
I was a fan of most of the first Wonder Woman film, but sadly disappointed by Wonder Woman 1984. At First Things, I wrote a little on how the film failed to live up to its promise. In her second film, the recent Wonder Woman 1984, Diana isn’t facing down an enemy power, but a distinctly… Read More
Defending Dependence
My essay, "Dependence: Toward an Illiberalism of the Weak" is part of Plough's Family issue. Everyone is dependent (at least some of the time) but women have a much harder time than men pretending not to be. Hiding dependence hurts us all. On January 21, I'll be joining Ross Douthat, Sarah C. Williams and Peter… Read More
Children Are a Rebuke to Our Schedules
After our baby, Beatrice, was born, I wrote a piece for the Institute for Family Studies on children as natural born interruptors, including of some of our culture's mistaken expectations about time. We can deceive ourselves (at least for a little while) about our limits and our control—by staying up too late to finish something… Read More
Kristin Lavransdatter, Motorcycles, and Docility to Reality
I've been reading Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter in concert with a group of folks who have all committed to "Kristin by Christmas!" One passage I particularly loved comes when Kristin goes to stay and be schooled at a convent. Abbess Groa welcomes Kristin with these words: I have heard good things of you, and you… Read More
Summer in the Forest: “The Weak Lead Us To Reality”
Summer in the Forest, Randall Wright’s documentary on Jean Vanier and his L’Arche communities for the disabled, contains a number of indelible moments. In one, an elderly man sits, docilely, for a haircut. As a younger worker clips his hair, he holds out his knobbled hand and receives the milkweed-silk trimmings in his palm. The… Read More